1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an air cleaning apparatus having an electrical dust collecting section. In this specification, the term "dust" is used to refer mainly to particulate pollutants such as cigarette smoke.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional electrical dust collecting section comprises an electrical discharge electrode for ionizing molecules in air, and electrical field forming and dust collecting electrodes for electrostatically attaching and collecting dust particles charged by ions. The dust collecting electrodes have a large dust collecting area to improve dust collection efficiency. This large dust collecting area, however, prevents the forming of a compact, lightweight air cleaning apparatus. To decrease the lengths of the electrical field forming and dust collecting electrodes along the direction of the air flow without lowering the dust collection efficiency, the strength of an electrical field formed between the electrical field forming electrodes and the dust collecting electrodes must be increased. In this case, however, there is a tendency for a spark discharge to occur, which can lead to various problems arising.